StudioLiscious: Organic Modern Furniture

We are loving the hand-crafted, organic wooden forms from this Canadian Etsy store. Patrick Lajoie and Mara Minuzzo are StudioLiscious, based in Caledon, Ontario. Mara paints and Patrick has a woodworking shop with lots of natural light. According to their site, they occasionally share their workshop with their 11 year-old son, who likes to build sculptures out of our wood scraps (and then leave them lying around). See Their Etsy Store

How do you describe your craft to people?We describe ourselves primarily as designers and makers of handmade modern furniture and accessories for the home.

What are some of inspirations behind your designs?We find inspiration in a lot of places but overall it comes from our love of clean, modern lines coupled with the warmth added by natural elements such as beautiful wood grain or organic motifs referenced from plants and animals.

What colours are catching your eye these days, and making their way into your work?Being primarily woodworkers, we work mainly with the earthy palette of natural wood colors such as the rich brown of walnut and the pale neutral of birch. But with Mara's background in fashion and fine art, we are excited about our plans to introduce a collection of custom printed pillows inspired by the bright colours coming out of the fashion world at the moment.

Do you draw from other media, like literature and music for inspiration in your art?We love to keep up to date on design world trends and architecture through our favourite design magazines and this definitely motivates us and gets our design juices flowing. Ultimately though our goal is always to come up with work that is original and that we haven't seen before, which is one of the biggest challenges.

If you weren't working in your media, what material would you like to work with?Besides the media we work with together for Studio Liscious we both have actually already branched off into other media separately. Mara's other chosen media is painting, which she has been pursuing for a few years now bluetrike.etsy.com and Patrick's is photography, which is more recent and a great break from the physical demands of woodworking.

What are your favourite creations this year?

Our favourite creation from this year is our 'On The Rocks' tabletop sculpture collection of wooden gems, which we like because it uses up plywood scraps that would otherwise be waste material and also meets our goal of making things that are modern and organic at the same time – plus they're fun to play with and do double duty as paper weights!See in Store